Xavi, Pirlo and Scholes: Strangers by birth, brothers by nature

Brothers by nature

Scholes, Pirlo and Xavi are not very different though they play in different leagues

Xavi- "That's what I do: look for spaces. All day. I'm always looking"

Pirlo- “I look for space so I can get the ball and then start to conduct the play. On the pitch, I’m a wandering gypsy.”

Gary Neville on Paul Scholes- “ He had eyes in the back of his head and a pass as accurate as a laser.”

They may have been born in different environments, but by nature, Xavi, Pirlo and Scholes were special footballers for the same reasons. They relied on intelligence and mastery of the ball amid the physicality of midfield and it always seemed as if they had an eternity on the ball.

It is only the different environments of their respective leagues that moulded them into different players- Xavi giving the ball and getting the ball constantly, Pirlo becoming a master of the long pass and free-kicks and Scholes becoming adept at arriving in the hole just outside the penalty box to score from long-shots.

In another universe, if Xavi were at Manchester United, Pirlo at Barcelona and Scholes in Italy, things would not be much different. Their personalities were similar too. Scholes described his ideal day as "train in the morning, pick up my children from school, play with them, have tea, put them to bed and then watch a bit of TV."

Xavi would go and pick setas (mushrooms) in the countryside whenever he had a day off while other players would be testing the speed limits with one of their 2,391 cars, Andrea Pirlo would be riding a rusted bicycle along the brick streets of a quiet beach town.

It seems unimaginable that a celebrity footballer would be living a life like this. But then ,maybe that’s the life you need to become a midfield maestro. As Brazilian great Scorates once said- “He who runs, doesn’t think... He who thinks, doesn’t run.”